This book examines the globalization of belly dance and the distinct dancing communities that have evolved from it. The history of belly dance has taken place within the global flow of sojourners, immigrants, entrepreneurs, and tourists from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. In some cases, the dance is transferred to new communities within the gender normative structure of its original location in North Africa and the Middle East. Belly dance also has become part of popular culture’s Orientalist infused discourse. The consequence of this discourse has been a global revision of the solo dances of North Africa and the Middle East into new genres that are still part of the larger belly dance community but are distinct in form and meaning from the dance as practiced within communities in North Africa and the Middle East.

This is the first volume devoted to the topic of dance and quality of life. Thirty-one chapters illuminate dance in relation to singular and overlapping themes of nature, philosophy, spirituality, religion, life span, learning, love, family, teaching, creativity, ability, socio-cultural identity, politics and change, sex and gender, wellbeing, and more. With contributions from a multi-generational group of artists, community workers, educators, philosophers, researchers, students and health professionals, this volume presents a thoughtful, expansive-yet-focused, and nuanced discussion of dance’s contribution to human life. The volume will interest dance specialists, quality of life researchers, and anyone interested in exploring dance’s contribution to quality of living and being.

From the dance floor of a tango club to group therapy classes, from ballet to community theatre, improvised dance is everywhere. For some dance artists, improvisation is one of many approaches within the choreographic process. For others, it is a performance form in its own right. And while it has long been practiced, it is only within the last twenty years that dance improvisation has become a topic of critical inquiry. With The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance, dancer, teacher, and editor Vida L. Midgelow provides a cutting-edge volume on dance improvisation in all its facets. Expanding beyond conventional dance frameworks, this handbook looks at the ways that dance improvisation practices reflect our ability to adapt, communicate, and respond to our environment. Throughout the handbook, case studies from a variety of disciplines showcase the role of individual agency and collective relationships in improvisation, not just to dancers but to people of all backgrounds and abilities. In doing so, chapters celebrate all forms of improvisation, and unravel the ways that this kind of movement informs understandings of history, socio-cultural conditions, lived experience, cognition, and technologies.

"Core Connections: Cairo Belly Dance in the Revolution's Aftermath investigates local, intra-Middle Eastern, and global circulations of belly dance centered within Cairo, Egypt, in the tumultuous aftermath of the Jan. 25th, 2011 revolution. This multi-sited ethnography takes audiences on a taxi ride that viscerally moves through contemporary city-circuitries of dance venues and stories from the Nile cruising tourist boats and decadent five-star hotels to smoky late-night discos and Pyramid Street cabarets. While mapping the multiple maneuverings of Cairene dancers and non-dancers alike, this book centralizes Cairene dancers embodied political insight while fleshing out nuanced portraits of their lives and stories amidst ongoing political precarity. In addition to interweaving Dance and Middle Eastern Gender Studies, this book innovatively 'does' and writes ethnography. This book's ethnographic approach embodies the dance itself via attending to the dual meanings of moving; centralizing mobility and movement as sites of power and knowledge, but also in researching and writing in ways that move emotionally, stirring up poignant affect that leads to physical reaction, change, and connection. In other words, this ethnography aims to center the same aesthetics and values of Cairo belly dancing, to 'move' with greater feeling to cultivate richer core connections within ourselves, between one another, and within our city-spaces. In doing so, this book stakes a claim for listening to the subtleties of otherwise marginalized bodily interaction, exchange, and wisdom as rippling with potential for stepping into more revolutionary realities and relationships. Core Connections: Cairo Belly Dance in the Revolution's Aftermath investigates local, intra-Middle Eastern, and global circulations of belly dance centered within Cairo, Egypt. This ethnography takes audiences on a taxi ride that viscerally moves through contemporary dance venues from the Nile cruising tourist boats and decadent five-star hotels to smoky late-night discos and Pyramid Street cabarets"--

Moving Together: Dance and Pluralism in Canada explores how dance intersects with the shifting concerns of pluralism in a variety of racial and ethnic communities across Canada. Focusing on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, contributors examine a broad range of dance styles used to promote diversity and intercultural collaborations. Examples include Fijian dance in Vancouver; Japanese dance in Lethbridge; Danish, Chinese, Kathak, and Flamenco dance in Toronto; African and European contemporary dance styles in Montréal; and Ukrainian dance in Cape Breton. Interviews with Indigenous and Middle Eastern dance artists along with an artist statement by a Bharata Natyam and contemporary dance choreographer provide valuable artist perspectives. Contributors offer strategies to decolonize dance education and also challenge longstanding critiques of multiculturalism. Moving Together demonstrates that dance is at the cutting edge of rethinking the contours of race and ethnicity in Canada and is necessary reading for scholars, students, dance artists and audiences, and everyone interested in thinking about the future of racial and ethnic pluralism in Canada.

This book is about the folk: the folk in folk dance, the folk in folklore, the folk in folk wisdom. When we see folk dance on the stage or in a tourist setting, which is the way in which many of us experience folk dance, the question arises are these the “real folk” performing their authentic dances? Or are they urban, well trained, carefully-rehearsed professional dancers who make their livelihood as representatives of a specific nation-state acting as the folk? Or something in between? This study delves more deeply into the folk, their origins, their identities in order to know the source of inspiration for ethno identity dances - dances prepared for the stage and the ballroom and for public performances from ballet, state folk dance ensembles and their amateur emulators, immigrant folk dance group performances, and tourist presentations. These dances, unlike modern dance, ballet, or most vernacular dances, always have strong ethnic references. It will also look at a gallery of choreographers and artistic directors across a wide spectrum of dance genres.

From jewellery to meditation pillows to tourist retreats, religious traditions – especially those of the East – are being commodified as never before. Imitated and rebranded as ‘New Age’ or ‘spiritual’, they are marketed to secular Westerners as an answer to suffering in the modern world, the ‘mystical’ and ‘exotic’ East promising a path to enlightenment and inner peace. In Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi, Sophia Rose Arjana examines the appropriation and sale of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam in the West today, the role of mysticism and Orientalism in the religious marketplace, and how the commodification of religion impacts people’s lives.

In these essays, dancers and scholars from around the world carefully consider the transformation of an improvised folk form from North Africa and the Middle East into a popular global dance practice. They explore the differences between the solo improvisational forms of North Africa and the Middle East, often referred to as raqs sharki, which are part of family celebrations, and the numerous globalized versions of this dance form, belly dance, derived from the movement vocabulary of North Africa and the Middle East but with a variety of performance styles distinct from its site of origin. Local versions of belly dance have grown and changed along with the role that dance plays in the community. The global evolution of belly dance is an inspiring example of the interplay of imagination, the internet and the social forces of local communities. All royalties are being donated to Women for Women International, an organization dedicated to supporting women survivors of war through economic, health, and social education programs. The contributors are proud to provide continuing sponsorship to such a worthwhile and necessary cause.

Raqs sharqi, the Egyptian dance form also known as belly dance, has for generations captured imaginations around the globe. Yet its origins have been obscured by misinformation and conjecture, rooted in Orientalist attitudes about the Middle East--a widely accepted narrative suggests the dance was created in response to Western influences and desires. Drawing on an array of primary sources, the author traces the early development of raqs sharqi in the context of contemporary trends in Egyptian arts and entertainment. The dance is revealed to be a hybrid cultural expression, emerging with the formation of Egyptian national identity at the end of the 19th century, when Egypt was occupied by the British.

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